Why The Winchester Hotel Is Up For Sale
Developer John Bernardo spent the last decade and $2.5M restoring the old Winchester Hotel building on Parliament Street. It's been a long slog, and now it's on the block. (People haven't been this excited for a Victorian beauty since Mia Wasikowska played Jane Eyre.)
John (whom we snapped at the site with his broker, CBRE's Barbara Bardos) bought the building in 2005. With help from Stanford Downey Architects, he painstakingly restored the front facade, original windows and doorways. John drew up plans to redevelop the residential space at the back of the building, where the hotel used to be, adding about 25 new units to the existing 17 rental apartments, but says he decided not to seek a permit in the end. “I figured I'll give it to whoever buys the building as upside.”
The ground-floor retail was redeveloped, too, with a 3.1k SF space at the corner of Winchester and Parliament—previously a pub—becoming home to what John says is Canada's first-ever heritage-style Tim Hortons, complete with replica tin ceilings: “We asked them to do heritage and it cost them an arm and a leg.” |
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Square One Shows Off New Look
The official opening of Square One's newly expanded $60M north side wing drew Outgoing Mississauga mayor Hazel McCallion, Oxford Properties Group EVP Michael Kitt and more last Friday. The second phase of redevelopment is complete, and it will increase the shopping centre's retail space to 2.1M SF by 2016, a total investment of over $480M. The new north side wing grows existing retail by 78k SF, adding a Forever 21 (the largest in Ontario), Brandy Melville and Saje, plus a 16k SF Shoppers Drug Mart Beauty Boutique. La Maison Simons and Holt Renfrew stores are slated to open in 2016. Oxford's Michael Kitt said the redeveloped Square One “expresses our vision for what the rest of our 11 shopping centres in Canada could look like.” |
How Manulife Reinvented Its IT
What looks looks like an Apple Store, but only employees at Manulife get to use? In recent months, the financial services giant has opened a trio of tech lounges, first at its Toronto HQ, then Waterloo, and just a few days ago at the John Hancock building in Boston, which it owns. Rather than chase an elusive IT person, Manulife staff now can drop by the tech lounges. And they can check out gadgets like BlackBerrys, iPads and laptops. VP Jacques Ouimet (snapped at the opening of the Boston lounge with John Hancock president Craig Bromley) tells us the spaces are equipped with the same tech as rooms upstairs, "so employees can come down to get training, go back upstairs and use it.”
 Tech departments are good at pushing tech, but not necessarily as concerned with how well users are dealing with it. “We realized there was a gap there,” Jacques says. He acknowledges Manulife didn't invent the tech lounge concept; the company's spaces are modelled after the Apple Store and its Genius Bar. “We figured if that kind of support works in the retail model, maybe it will work in the corporate model.” |
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Black Friday Strike?
Employees at 1,600 Walmart locations are planning the biggest strike in company history on Black Friday. Keep reading to see why they're picketing. |
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